The Actual Truth is Hard to Believe

The actual truth, we could say, is the set of beliefs that actually get us to do what needs to get done and bears witness to reality. (It is non-pathological.) It will bring about the best possible world, if we all believe it, because it's actually true, and thus can guide us to true well-being, in a way that belief-sets that are not actually true cannot. The actual truth always unites, because it takes into account all the important aspects of reality. It is not the truth that a partisan would believe, who didn't care about anybody outside his or her party. It is the belief-set that acknowledges all valid human values, and if it must invalidate any values, it does so validly. It is a judge that all can respect, and by respecting its inherent legitimacy, find that even its painful or challenging judgments are just and satisfying.

However, as desirable as the actual truth might sound, it's hard to believe. It's conceivable that that's because there is no actual truth, and it could be difficult to show that the actual truth is true, if it does exist. But even if that difficulty can be surmounted, it may still be hard to believe the actual truth, for social reasons. It is the case that it is far more likely for people to believe approximations of the actual truth, different ones, and form communities around those approximations, which then may be in conflict with other communities with their approximations. Within each partisan community, it is easy to believe the one truth shared within it, without considering outsiders' points of view. From this it is possible to go to physical or cultural war, exhausting people. One solution to the conflict that ensues is to stop caring about the truth. That way people can all think the same way, by assenting to yet another approximation of the actual truth, one of compromise. Either by "siloing" in attractive tribal approximations, or constructing a popular consensus approximation, people do not seek the actual truth.

There is the actual truth, which is right and true because it is what is actual truth, valuable like a star by which we can travel for millions of years, and then there are smaller truths, which seem far more important to us because the fit around us on earth, where we live the lives that we think are so important. We might say that we urgently need certain small truths to survive. Some of them may be necessary to even consider traveling by starlight. Maybe this is true. It is possible that there are small truths which can only be known if we seek the actual truth. Perhaps ones which can only be known if we find the actual truth.

So, difficult as seeking the actual truth is, it is a desirable and necessary thing. It does not deserve to be unpopular.